Skip the Ph.D and Learn Spark, Data Science Salary Survey Says

Prospective data scientists can boost their salary more by learning Apache Spark and its tied-at-the-hip language Scala than obtaining a Ph.D., a recent data science survey by O’Reilly suggests.In its 2015 Data Science Salary Survey, O’Reilly found strong correlations between those who used Apache Spark and Scala, and those who were paid more money. In one of its models, using Spark added more than $11,000 to the median salary, while Scala had about a $4,000 impact to the bottom line. “It is no surprise that Spark is the tool with the greatest coefficient,” O’Reilly says in its report. “If we indulge in a possible violation of assuming cause and effect, learning Spark could apparently have more of an impact on salary than getting a PhD. Scala is another bonus: those…